Women Are Already Underrepresented On Major Film Crews, And The Numbers Are Getting Worse

Aaron Taube, provided by

Published 5:13 pm, Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Though female participation in the overall labor force has increased over the past two decades, Hollywood is still the boys' club it has always been.

In fact, there are actually fewer women working on major motion pictures today than there were in 1994, according to a new report compiled by the writer and film producer Stephen Follows.

Follows looked at the crews behind the top 100 grossing films in each of the past 20 years and found that female participation dropped from 22.7% in 1994 to 21.8% in 2013, without showing much fluctuation in either direction.

Another troubling fact from the report is that the major creative roles — writer, producer, and director — continue to be dominated by men. In 2013, women accounted for just 18% of producers, 7% of writers, and 2% of directors.

Neither of those numbers are much changed from what they were in 1994 — a sad commentary on how little control women have over a medium that is vital to our cultural discourse.

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Female representation in technical jobs like editor and cinematographer was similarly dismal, at 11% and 2% in 2013, respectively.

The lone bright spot, if you can even call it that, came in the historically gendered fields of costume design and casting, where women made up the majority for 2013's highest-grossing films.